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Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Don’t Exclude Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People from Policy

(New York) – South Korea should
immediately halt the roll-out of its new sex education policy, released
early this year, and revise materials that fail to include
homosexuality or sexual minorities, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the government today. The exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)people from the policy will have discriminatory impact and should be reversed.

In early 2015, the Ministry of Education began to hold training sessions
for district education officers across the country on new sex education guidelines that
exclude any mention of homosexuality or sexual minorities. In a
communique issued in March to explain the policy, the ministry put
forward the discordant claims that on the one hand, “the subject of
homosexuality is being treated from a human rights perspective in the
curriculum,” but on the other, mention of homosexuality is excluded from
the curriculum because homosexuality is “not a common issue in relation
to sexual orientation,” and “school education needs to be carried
maintaining value neutrality regarding society, culture and religion.”

“These guidelines enshrine discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” said Graeme Reid,
LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Excluding homosexuality
and LGBT people in the curriculum sends a pejorative, intolerant message
to the youth of South Korea and violates basic rights to information,
health, and education.”

The guidelines contradict South Korea’s leadership role at the United
Nations in recent years, where it has voted for both the 2011and 2014
Human Rights Council resolutions calling for an end to violence and
discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The right to health requires that individuals have access to accurate
information, including information related to sexual and reproductive
health. UN treaty bodies have repeatedly highlighted the importance of
accurate and inclusive sex education and information as a means of
ensuring the right to health because it contributes to a reduction of
the rates of maternal mortality, abortion, adolescent pregnancies, and
HIV.

HIV infections have increased sharply in South Korea since 2000, and infections are increasing fastest among men in their 20s. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2011 made it a priority to
improve health education targeted at workers, youth, teenagers, young
adults, and elderly in order to diminish risky behavior.

Major UN agencies, such as the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization, and UNESCO all
recommend inclusive approaches to sex education – this is significantly
different from what South Korea is moving to implement.

South Korea has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the
Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women, and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The
treaty bodies that monitor these three international covenants have all
called to uphold the right to accurate information, including about
sexual health.

Some religious groups, however, have pressured the government to exclude
information about LGBT people from the sex education curriculum. For
example, in 2014, the Korean Association of Church Communication, a
religious group, issued a statement condemning
the contents of the draft sex education policy for teaching students
about homosexuality openly and mentioning “diverse sexual orientations”
which, the group claimed, may lead young people to “fall into
temptation” and a “wrong” sort of sexual culture.

“For South Korea to grapple with its HIV epidemic and maintain its
integrity in international human rights forums, the government needs to
ensure accurate and inclusive information is delivered to students as a
matter of policy,” said Reid. “That includes information about LGBT
people. Erasing a population from the curriculum under pressure from
religious groups is only going to sanction shame and cause harm.”

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